Giving Compass' Take:

• Thomas Arnett shares four of his ideas for improving schools in 2019 centered around better supporting teachers. 

• What sort of stakeholder buy-in is needed to make changes like these effective? 

• Learn about the role of social-emotional learning in improving school climate. 

1. Put technology in service of teaching: Teachers, not technologies, define performance in our education system. Even if our end goal is student-centered instruction, teachers are the key to making that kind of instruction a reality. So instead of fixating on what technology can do—often with teachers engineered out of the equation—we need to find ways to amplify teachers’ capacity. Technology should function in service of that aim, not as an end in itself.

2. Prioritize student-teacher relationships: One of the greatest benefits of blended and personalized learning is creating more opportunities for teachers to relate one-on-one with their students. But efforts to personalize learning easily fixate on learning activities while overlooking how to make relationships between students and teachers more personal.

3. Decouple teaching and grading: In most schools, teachers have a tricky tightrope to walk: on one hand, their aim is to inspire students’ passion for content, coach students on study habits, and motivate students to fulfill their academic potential. On the other hand, they must be judges who develop assessments, set grading policies, and then hand out performance marks. In the best case scenario, teachers are rigorous and unbiased assessors of student performance, and students see the grades from their teachers as fair. But all too often, when students get bad marks, teachers must pivot from being an advocate to an adversary as they defend the results of their grading; and students all too easily walk away rationalizing that their bad grades were more a reflection of the teachers’ biased or unfair grading and not the students’ own efforts.

4. Offer more PD for purposeful practice: In my years researching K–12 education, I’ve been underwhelmed by most of the innovations in professional development (PD). Personalized PD—through online learning and micro-credentials—is certainly an improvement over one-size-fits-all, sit-and-get workshops. But I’m skeptical of whether these forms of personalized PD will actually move the needle on student outcomes.

Read the full article about improving schools by Thomas Arnett at Christensen Institute.